RIVERSIDE: UCR opens new medical building

He was pale. His unfocused eyes gazed toward the ceiling, and his mouth gaped. His arms and legs were motionless as he lay on the hospital gurney. But occasionally he blinked, and his chest regularly rose and fell. A check of his carotid artery revealed a pulse, and a listen to his chest showed that his heart was beating.

Only it wasn’t. He had no heart at all.

The high-tech anatomical model, or manikin – more of a teacher than a patient – resides in one of the teaching labs in the newly finished School of Medicine education building at UC Riverside. The building’s dedication on Thursday, Dec. 13, marked the final step in readying the new medical school for its first class of 50 students next fall.

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That opening represents a decade-long struggle to open the first new UC medical school in 47 years, said the school’s dean, G. Richard Olds. He has said the school will help to address a physician shortage in the Inland region and will focus on training family practice doctors who will remain in the area once they are out of school.

Funding has been the main hurdle. And while enough money from community sources has been found to open the school, officials still are looking for a long-term commitment from the state.

The three-story education building, on the east end of the campus, once housed classrooms and labs for statistics and computer classes. It is a companion to the School of Medicine’s research building, which was completed last year. Students in the Haider medical program, a joint effort between UCR and UCLA, have been using part of the education building for the past year while the rest of the space was remodeled into mock patient exam rooms and the four learning labs, each with its own $300,000 manikin.

Paul Lyons is the medical school’s senior assistant dean for education. He said the manikins can be used to simulate a wide variety of scenarios.

“We can give them some kind of a problem with the heart, and they (students) would see the live EKG up here,” Lyons said, pointing to a large flat-screen television on the wall. “They can cry. They have liquid in the bladder. They have swappable genitalia so we can make them male or female.”

When hit with a bright light, the manikin’s pupils contract. When the skin is punctured, it bleeds. Students can inject it with drugs or hook up an intravenous line. The figure can lift its head from the pillow, clench its jaw and foam at the mouth.

And, in a way, it can even speak.

An operator sitting behind a two-way mirror is equipped with a microphone – linked to the manikin’s head – and a laptop that allows the manikin’s functions to be modified depending upon its symptoms and the type of treatment being provided.

Lyons said it’s not only a good way to expose medical students to different symptoms they might encounter in a real patient, but it’s also a way to allow students to get that experience without potentially endangering a real person.

“The first patient a student touches should probably not be a real human being,” Lyons said. “This gives the student the opportunity to learn and to make mistakes in a low-risk situation, before they touch their first real patient.”

Former Assemblywoman Wilmer Carter was on hand for the opening. She said she was inspired by the simulation lab and the building’s other features. Those include a series of examination rooms where student physicians will interact with actors portraying patients with various illnesses or injuries. The visits will be videotaped and analyzed by the students and their instructors.

“If I was younger,” Carter said. “I’d go back to school.”

The School of Medicine was accredited in October, after failing its first attempt in 2011, when it was told it didn’t have sufficient funding. Because of the state’s fiscal crisis, anticipated money for the school was pulled. Local government and community sources were tapped and enough money was raised in the following year to meet the accreditation requirements. But UCR is still looking for an ongoing financial commitment for the school from the state. The UC Board of Regents recently submitted a budget requesting $15 million for the school.

Carter said she thinks the Legislature will approve that request. Although in past years, some regents were reluctant to back such a request, Carter said, “They’re all wholeheartedly on board now.”

With that, and with some new members of the Legislature, she said, “I think it will happen this year.”